Seeking Sanctuary
by Gevaudan
Summary: When the stress of working for Torchwood gets too much they all have their own ways of escaping. A short look at each of the Team...Now complete.
1. Gwen

_**Disclaimer: All characters belong to RTD and the BBC.**_

_**Summary: A short look at how the team seek some respite from working for Torchwood.**_

_**Author's Note: There will be five chapters over the five days (hopefully) for each of the team. Enjoy.**_

**Seeking Sanctuary**

**Gwen**

Everyone thought they knew what Gwen was rushing home for, assumed that Thursday nights, the night she often pushed to finish at a reasonable hour, were the nights when Rhys would be at home waiting for her with a pot of Spag Bol simmering on the hob. They sent her off with a cheery wave, and a "say hello to Rhys," and she could see the flicker of resentment in their eyes that they had no such domestic bliss to return to.

But the truth was, Gwen loved Thursday night because Rhys spent the whole night at the pub with Dav and Banana Boat, and she could finally have some time to herself. It wasn't that she didn't love Rhys, she did; heart and soul, although she hadn't always acted that way. The memories of her affair with Owen flood her with shame, and the thought of how she had acted with Jack, in front of Ianto, had led to an evening filled with tears and recrimination. She doesn't want Jack, not really, but she wants to be understood, and Rhys, lovely sweet Rhys, will never know how it feels to be shot through the head, to stare down the barrel of a loaded shotgun, to be chained to a psychopath, and truth be told, she doesn't want him to understand.

That's why she cherishes her lonely Thursday nights. These are the nights that she doesn't have to lie in answer to almost every question Rhys asks. She isn't constantly on her guard in case, in her fatigue addled state she tells Rhys something that would fill him so full of fear he would never let her out of the flat again. She can take a bath, without considering how best to hide the bruises that mar her pale skin beneath the froth of bubbles if he happens to appear through the door with his cheeky grin. She can cry, deep gasping sobs, at the horrors she has seen befall others, the horrors that have befallen Torchwood, befallen her, and she doesn't have to brush her tears under the carpet so Rhys never realises the depth of her distress.

Thursday nights are Gwen's solitude and her time to come to terms with the changes in her life, and as much as she loves him, she doesn't want Rhys intruding on that. Her nights with him are escapism, a big glass of wine and the episodes of Wife Swap and Supernanny that he has dutifully recorded for her and a chance to hide the memories of work under the screaming cries of ill-behaved children on reality TV shows. But sometimes, she doesn't want to forget, she wants to wallow in the pain of the memories until the ache in her heart is a little less.

Sometimes, she thinks Ianto knows her secret, and isn't too surprised. After all, he knows everything, and recognising Rhys on a CCTV camera is beneath his prodigious talents. She can't be certain, but the way he slips a bar of chocolate into her hand on a Thursday after a particularly tough week, with a tiny, knowing smile leads her to think that he understands. He never mentions Rhys either on those nights, just waves her out of the door with a heartfelt, _"Noswaith da, Gwen"_. So she thanks him for the chocolate with a hug, and brings him his favourite breakfast pastry on a Friday because it's nice to have someone who cares about her, without needing to know all the details.

So on a Thursday, Gwen is always first to leave, not to be with people she loves, but instead to be away from them.


	2. Owen

**Seeking Sanctuary**

**Owen**

They thought Owen escaped to the pubs and clubs of Cardiff, most ,if not every time they were released from the Hub early enough to do anything other than collapse into exhausted, fitful sleep for a few hours, before getting up to do it all again. Owen did nothing to dissuade them from their ideas, though in truth since the disappearance of Diane, he hasn't felt much like a night of drunken debauchery, which he has to reflect, is most unlike him.

Everything, everyone, he meets is so transient and now he finds himself longing for something stable and guaranteed in his life, something other than the inconvenient phone calls from Jack Harkness that he will never be able to escape.

He finds now that he understands Suzie's desperate need to talk to someone outside the walls of work, and while he almost admires the depth of thought she put into her scheming, he will never forgive her casual disregard for other people. They worked so hard to keep this city safe, this planet safe, and while he may groan and curse about it, he can't ever imagine deliberately harming a civilian. He still can't quite believe he shot Jack, and the fact he did still wakes him up at night in a cold sweat of guilt. The trouble is they're stuck between a rock and a hard place; the only people who understands them is each other, and sometimes that was who they needed to moan about. Even if you weren't moaning about the Team everyone else was too busy maintaining their own tenuous grip on sanity, and could ill afford to loosen it to shoulder someone else's troubles.

Initially he'd taken to walking, just setting off in a direction and seeing where his feet took him. It soon came to his notice though that it was a lonely pastime, and he really didn't know Cardiff as well as he should for someone who had lived here for three years. That had been perfectly obvious the night his Bluetooth had crackled into life and Ianto's calm voice had advised him that he probably shouldn't go any further down the street he was on if he wished to escape with his wallet, and his life. Owen had promptly turned around with a mutter about "nannying butlers," but to his credit Ianto had never said a word about it, just left a sheet of neatly written names of streets to avoid and a pamphlet of local walks from the tourist office on Owen's desk with his coffee one morning.

Owen never mentioned it either. But he did make sure that he did the lunch run that day as a thank you.

In the end, Owen had rescued a dog. Or perhaps, the dog had rescued Owen. She was an old golden cocker spaniel, content with a gentle stroll and lots of strokes on the sofa. The moment she had pinned Owen with those black soleful eyes, he knew that she would end up in his flat, because he couldn't live with the guilt he would have felt if he had left her on the street. The pathetic gratefulness with which she'd licked his fingers had melted his heart and for once, Owen had a stable relationship with a female with whom he could share the tales of his day. And though she couldn't answer him, he felt better for telling his stories.

She was his secret, and he told no one on the team about her, although eerily Ianto had left a Walks For Dogs pamphlet and some Pedigree Treats with his coffee one morning. Torchwood was not the ideal job for dog owning, he was forced to concede quickly, luckily Lucy, as he'd named her, was quick to garner some attention from his neighbour in the opposite flat. Owen had never spoken to the quiet, retired woman before, but they had bonded over a shared love of dogs, and on the nights Owen didn't come home she would let herself in, take Lucy for a stroll around the park on the corner, feed her, and lavish her with attention.

So when Owen left for the night, making cracks about finding a girl to spend the night with, he didn't really have to try very hard: and she was always guaranteed to end up in bed with him, no matter how many times he told her she wasn't allowed on the duvet.


	3. Toshiko

**Seeking Sanctuary**

**Toshiko**

When she finally leaves the Hub after a long day of staring at monitors and tapping at keyboards she knows that they all expect her to go home, switch her computer and start all over again. Toshiko Sato loves computers, she really does, adores the sense of power she gets from bending a program to her will with an air of command she can't ever summon on other people. So she is unsurprised that when she leaves the Hub Jack warns her on the dangers of getting square eyes, Ianto rolls his eyes at the oft aired comment and Owen, on the rare occasions he's still there, makes a terrible joke about her turning into a cyborg, which darkens Ianto's expression. Not that Owen would ever notice.

As she unlocks her flat, and steps into the calming, comfortable interior, computers are the last thing Tosh thinks about. She sees enough of them day in, day out: Hub computers, broken computers (usually Gwen's home PC), alien computers, SUV computers, handheld computers; the list is endless but it stops as she enters her home. Here she has books, refusing to switch to an e-Reader even with the alien scanning device she once borrowed from the Hub, because there is something soothing about turning the pages. She writes letters with an ink pen to her family feeling that the characters of the Japanese alphabet are somehow soulless when they appear in computer type face. Here is where she paints, because you can't represent the patterns of your feelings in computer code.

She doesn't consider herself a particularly good artist, and doesn't paint careful, copied, paint-by-numbers representations that the others might expect of her. Instead with bold strokes, she splashes the colours of her feelings over the canvas; yellow curves of her anticipation of seeing Tommy, soft stripes of purple contentment on solving a challenge, the green spikes of her jealousy of Gwen and her relationship with Owen. They are all piled in her spare room, memories of vented rage, of crushing sorrow and of soaring happiness. It was Toshiko's technicolour journal, a chaotic jumble of colour amongst the order of her cream flat.

For a long time she had been sure that none of her colleagues knew of her hobby. They weren't in the habit of dropping round to her flat, in fact she only really saw Ianto out of work and they tended to meet in town, and she was always careful to scrub all remnants of the thick pigment from her nails. But occasionally, when she needed them most, tubes of paint would appear on her desk. After Mary, there had been a furious shade of red that encapsulated perfectly the inner rage she felt towards both Mary and Jack. After Tommy's death there was a rich dark blue, a shade that seemed to match the sorrow in her heart, nestled, almost hidden, next to her coffee mug. Each time she had taken them home, and put brush to canvas, the bright paintings stained by the silvery tracks of her tears. There had been other paints too through the years, and the odd paint brush and although she had never asked, and he would never tell, she was sure that it was Ianto.

Because it was never spoken of it was hard to thank him for his gestures. She was sure he wouldn't appreciate it if she brought up the topic, it would only embarrass him, and if she were honest herself too. So instead, if she gets chance to visit the local second hand book shops she picks up unusual copies of Ian Fleming books, knowing that Ianto will appreciate both the contents and the cover art. He too, never says anything, but will settle down in the tourist office, feet propped up on the desk to read, and flash Tosh that rare bright smile of his as she passes.

Torchwood need her to be a technological genius, not an artist, she knows that. So as she leaves she puts on the latest computing podcast on her MP3 player, all the while looking forward to the moment she gets home, and can settle down with a good book or a paintbrush.


	4. Jack

**Seeking Sanctuary**

**Jack**

Most of his team thought that he didn't leave the Hub at the end of the day – and that was exactly how Captain Harkness liked it. On the rare occasions they did see him leave they assumed he was either with Ianto or shagging his way through the population of Cardiff. It seemed to have passed them all by that, barring one cheeky snog with Captain Hart, Ianto was the only person he'd had any sort of relationship with since before Gwen started Torchwood. Sure there had been flirting and innuendo, but that was largely a front to stop them asking for details of his personal life that he would rather not share.

So he thought it would probably surprise them if they discovered that he did, in fact, leave the Hub on a regular basis to go home with the young archivist. It would surprise them further if they found out that sex was not his main motivation. Instead, his focus often lay in the patch of muddy land that Ianto had once had the temerity to call a garden.

It had started after the faeries. Jack had a desperate need to control something of nature and had spent a summer evening pulling up weeds with a single-minded ferocity that Ianto both understood and was amused by in almost equal measure. From there it had progressed to the creation of flowerbeds, a small seating area and eventually the digging of a small pond. Jack was out there in all weathers with dogged determination whether or not the Welshman was at home.

Ianto, in his usual way, said nothing about this unsanctioned garden makeover, merely smiled understandingly at Jack's increasing unannounced presence and finally left a key on Jack's desk with a note attached saying only, "For non-emergencies,". The next time Jack had arrived brandishing the new key, there had been no sign of Ianto, but a new set of garden tools had been left out.

When Jack travelled with the Doctor, Ianto had neither time nor inclination to maintain the plot much to Jack's despair on his return. Nonetheless he returned eagerly to the project. It was nice to have something else to plan other than Torchwood missions, to be out in the fresh air for something other than Weevil hunts, and Jack found a sense of peace and contentment in the manual labour that he struggled to find anywhere else. Things around him often seemed so transient, and it was nice to create something that had the potential to last for a significant number of years. In the confines of the garden, no one questions his decisions, or makes snarky remarks, and the plants (for the most part) do as they are told. There is even a plentiful supply of good coffee, and, if he's lucky, an obliging Ianto to help him shower. To Jack, it seems like the closest to heaven he'll get for a long time.

There were failures along the way of course. Bushes that died for no discernable reason, paving slabs that wobbled no matter how hard he tried to level them and the great fish massacre of 2007 courtesy of next door's cat. But there were more often successes, most notably out of the garden. Initially Ianto and Jack had barely spoken; the wounds of Lisa's death and Brynblaidd still too raw. Then gradually there was a chat over a cup of coffee, the offer of dinner after Jack had worked, and as their relationship progressed he began to stay over. After his departure and return he had to re-earn Ianto's trust, but it wasn't long before the fell into their old routine with Jack gradually staying more and more until for all intents and purposes he had moved in. Again, Ianto said nothing, just created some space in the wardrobe and smiled happily and Jack was once again overwhelmingly grateful to have met someone who understood him the way Ianto did.

He was pleased that the garden was something that never seemed to be mentioned in the discussions of what the team knew about Jack. Ianto, seemed to understand that this was something he wanted to keep private, in fact he never came out into the garden when Jack was working, apparently knowing, as he knew everything, that Jack wanted his space. Instead he would curl up on the sofa with a book and wait until Jack was finished before joining him with a drink and a soft kiss.

So when Owen made sarcastic comments, Gwen came up with some attempt at innuendo and Tosh smiled knowingly, Jack joked along with them and let them think he was out to conquer Cardiff's population. It was only after they left that he would change into his scruffy clothes and set out to conquer Ianto's weeds. And his heart.


	5. Ianto

**Author's Note: Well here is the final chapter – I'm a bit scared about this one so I hope you like it. You're probably going to be getting a lot of updates from me today! There's this, 2 chapters of Wishes and another one shot (hopefully) to go up. I'm off to prepare for my wedding tomorrow (its on Saturday) so I'll be on hiatus til after the honeymoon! Have a great summer!**

**Edit note: I have re-uploaded this as there was a tenses mix-up that was really irritating me!**

**Seeking Sanctuary**

**Ianto**

He had heard them all speculating what he did when he left work once as he delivered the coffees. Owen had sworn blind he didn't actually leave and slept on a shelf in the archives because he'd once found a pillow and blanket down there. He hadn't had the heart to tell him that was from the last time he had come back too early following an injury and Jack made him take a nap. Gwen thought he probably went home and cleaned his own house as thoroughly as he cleaned the Hub. Ianto hadn't broken it to her that he didn't spend enough time at home for it to get messy. Tosh postulated that he must go and read Wikipedia – how else could he know _everything?_ Ianto definitely hadn't had the heart to tell her that his photographic memory made recalling the details that amazed them easy.

Ianto did none of those things. He didn't even settle down with a James Bond DVD or Ian Fleming book – or at least not until he's finished his out-of-hours tasks.

It started sometime after the events with Lisa, a desperate need to make amends to a team horrified by his betrayal. No grand gesture would be sufficient to earn their forgiveness, and Ianto was too shattered to think of something appropriate anyhow. So, it was in the small gestures – making sure he picked up a bar of chocolate for Gwen when he knew she'd had a bad week, noticing Tosh's visits to the local art shop and providing her with the occasional tube of paint, seeing Owen on the CCTV alone at night, and just keeping that extra eye out for his safety, even indulging Jack's foray into gardening. They were tiny unspoken gestures to help the rest of them find some peace at the end of the day. He wasn't good at talking, didn't know the right thing to say if they unburdened themselves to him – so instead, he did what he could to help them and in doing so tried to earn his own forgiveness and lessen the crushing guilt in his heart.

When he found out about Flat Holm Island it was almost second nature to do the same thing. First the staff, a box of cakes, a bunch of flowers anything to let them know their work was not going unforgotten. Before long though he was engaged in conversations with families, or in researching their latest patient's records; and if he finds out that Jenny loved jigsaws, or that Jonah likes football – then really it's no hardship to slip something appropriate in with the next food shipment.

Owen would call him crazy. Tosh would look at him sympathetically. Gwen would be surprised that she wasn't the only one who could care. Jack would tell him he was working too hard. But it wasn't work, not to Ianto. Instead it was his way of making peace with the mistakes in his past, and a way of coming to terms with the cruel randomness of life on the Rift. He can't make the people at Flat Holm better, any more than he can take away the nightmares that haunt the team, but he can improve their day to day lives, and let them all know that someone cares.

He doesn't expect thanks, doesn't want them, particularly not from their team. Working for Torchwood is gruelling, and they all wear their armour to work to protect themselves from any more hurt, himself included. If they all gave way to the emotion that threatened to overspill sometimes, he thinks they might all shatter and break. So, silently, unnoticed, he does his best to hold them all together, and in doing so finds calm within himself to stop him falling apart too.

He's not as unnoticed as he once thought, although the responses from the team are equally silent. Gwen arrives with breakfast for him in the morning, and leaves work at night with a hug. Owen bites his tongue on the most sarcastic of his retorts and even offers to collect the lunch one day when the rain is pouring and a gale is blowing outside. Tosh leaves him little gifts occasionally, often Ian Fleming books in an array of different publications, but once a tiny picture; incandescent and complex swirls in a dazzling array of colours, he had admired the intricacies of the design, a lump rising in his throat as he sees his name printed carefully in the bottom corner. And Jack, gives him the most precious gift of all, he drops his barriers, and as they sit in the garden he tells Ianto stories of his past, and his journey with the Doctor – and although they often fill him with horror, he treasures each of them.

So after work, he waits until the others have left – and Jack is engaged in either paperwork or the endless battle with the weeds in his garden, before he slips out to the shops to find items that will brighten their days. It's not what they would think, and it's certainly not what they would call relaxing, but finally Ianto Jones is at peace with himself, and so is the rest of Torchwood. And nothing could make him happier.


End file.
